Second-Story Man
It's a boy.
He looks like his mother, and a good thing, too. His father is clever, but not pretty. His mother is both.
The photographs on the mantle are tastefully mediocre. Smiles and teeth for the camera, cloth backdrops of a department store studio. Small knickknacks whisper stories that I never had the knack to hear.
Swaddled and smiling, he peers from within a blue blanket in glossy eight by ten.
A souvenir mouse-ear hat, perched atop the mantle clock, goes with the canvas print on the wall. The family is flanked by beloved characters and a storybook castle rises in the background.
The first time I went to that magical place was with her; she was a freshman and we'd been dating for a while. For years, we were in love, until she wasn't.
Red bow wraps training-wheeled bicycle, his gap-toothed smile is a sunbeam. A Southern-Living worthy Christmas tree twinkles behind him.
A proud little man stands with his blue ribbon, his hair a mess; second grade spelling champion. I wonder if the words 'betrayal,' 'bitter,' 'jettison,' or 'jilt' were in his study list.
He looks so much like his mother when he smiles, and my heart sinks when memories rise to the surface in teardrops. Prismatic vision blurs my eyes into the past when I see the three of them so happy in the now.
What did she name him?
Does she ever hear me in her memory?
I can almost imagine that his eyes look a little like mine. Maybe he laughs like I used to.
I nick a -knack and exit through the same window I entered, since this door closed so long ago.